July 29, 2003 @ 10am-5pm
The Lamplighter’s Rehearsal Hall, 469 Bryant Street, San Francisco
$200 Per Person
Limited to 6 singers, by audition.
Partial scholarships available.
Enhance your performance skills
The Singer’s Gym Method, which has illuminated opera repertoire for our alumni over the last 25 years, now widens its focus to include the music theater repertoire — Broadway songs new or old, and the long list of titles often collectively referred to as The Great American Songbook.
The workshop will be conducted by Singer’s Gym founder Ben Bernstein and Wayne Barker, whose wide-ranging career includes 30 years in New York as a vocal coach, audition pianist, arranger, accompanist, and a performer in his own right. He is a Tony-nominated composer and fluent in the stylistic gamut of classic and contemporary Broadway and the Great American Songbook.
This intensive one-day workshop is limited to 6 singers, by audition. Each singer will work on two contrasting audition pieces. Wayne will meet with each singer before the workshop to help select the best pieces to show the singer to her/his best advantage.
Application deadline: July 15th
Meet your instructors
Ben Bernstein
Coach, Director
Ben Bernstein, PhD is an acting teacher for singers, a stage director, an opera composer and a performance psychologist. Trained by Viola Spolin, he was Gian Carlo Menotti’s assistant at the American Opera Center in New York. Ben has staged premiere productions of new operas and has coached singers throughout the U.S. and abroad. He has conducted master classes and directed at the Sundance Institute, the San Francisco Opera, the Juilliard School, the American Opera Center, and has been a presenter at conferences worldwide. He speaks nationally on the subject of stress and performance. As a composer, he received commissioning grants for his one act opera, The Man in the Mirror, which had a successful premiere at the American Handel Festival in Seattle. His award-winning settings for The Song of Songs have been performed around the U.S. His three books, Crush Your Test Anxiety, A Teen’s Guide to Success, and Stressed Out! for Parents have received international attention. His ongoing blog, “Be Your Best,” on the Psychology Today website regularly receives thousands of hits.
Wayne Barker
Coach, Pianist
Wayne Barker is an accomplished pianist, accompanist and vocal coach. Winner of the Drama Desk Award and a Tony Award nominee for best original score (Peter and the Starcatcher), his stage musical Mr. Holland’s Opus (written with BD Wong) had its world premiere at Ogunquit Playhouse last summer. Wayne toured with Dame Edna Everage, appearing on stage as “Master of the Dame’s Music,” in her Broadway triumph Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance, and contributing special material for her 2006 Commonwealth Games and Royal Command Variety Performances, as well as Edna’s Australian, UK, and US Farewell Tours. Wayne composed and arranged the score of Sister’s Follies at Abrons Arts Center for acclaimed director (and 2015 MacArthur Fellow) Basil Twist, and has also contributed dozens of original arrangements to symphony pops programs, including those presented by the New York Pops, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra and the Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco and St. Louis symphonies, among many others.